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Comrade Aeon's Field Guide to Bangkok
Comrade Aeon's Field Guide to Bangkok | Emma Larkin
2 posts | 1 read
In Bangkok, a plot of land behind a city slum resonates with the hopes, dreams and fears of the local community. For Comrade Aeon, a homeless insurgent who fled to the jungle after a military crackdown on student protestors in 1976, it's a verdant refuge and the place from which he documents the underbelly of the city. For Ida Barnes, an ex-pat whose husband may be cheating on her, it's an inviting retreat. For Witty, an urbane property developer married to one of the city's most famous movie stars, it's a 'Bangkok Unicorn' - that rare chance to make his mark on the Bangkok skyline. But the slum-dwelling spirits who guard its secrets know that it holds a much darker history, that it masks the silent politics at the heart of Thai culture. Written with a tender compassion for Bangkok's people and customs, Comrade Aeon's Field Guide to Bangkok is a masterful, propulsive debut which introduces a fresh new talent in fiction
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charl08
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I loved her NF (on Orwell and Burma) and loved this new novel too.
The books opens with the state opening an empty shopping container, and denying any bodies have been found. This is a narrative with multiple viewpoints, from across Bangkok society including an expat bored housewife, a slum landlord and a foodstall-owning senior. The subsequent discovery of a mass grave in a patch of "jungle" in urban Bangkok has everyone on the move.

Cinfhen Oofff ! Sounds like a disturbing but powerful read 2y
charl08 @Cinfhen yes: but what I missed mentioning is the humour too: one of the characters writes for a soap opera and the overblown plots grip half the book's cast. 2y
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charl08
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.....Gazing wearily at the nation, he appeared to ad lib as he took off his spectacles and said in a more casual, almost avuncular tone, 'So it's best that you all go about your own business now and forget this incident. There's no more to be known and nothing else to see. Nothing, nothing at all.'

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